Rock
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Everyone from Taylor Swift to Paramore dropped new music just in time for Valentine’s Day, and Billboard wants to know which release you plan on having on repeat going into the holiday.
Swift continues riding the wave of her newest single “Lavender Haze” with a dance-heavy remix for the Midnights opener by Felix Jaehn. (Prior to being tapped by the superstar, the German producer was likely most familiar to U.S. audiences for helming Omi’s 2015 No. 1 hit “Cheerleader.”)
Hayley Williams and her bandmates, meanwhile, deliver their long-awaited comeback album This Is Why. The pop-punk trio’s first follow-up to 2017’s After Laughter contains singles “This Is Why,” “The News” and “C’est Comme Ça.”
Elsewhere, Lizzo teams up with her bestie SZA for a new remix of “Special,” which finds Billboard‘s newly revealed Woman of the Year preaching, “Woke up this mornin’ to somebody judgin’ me/ No surprise they judgin’ me, don’t know who I’m ‘posed to be I’m just actin’ up, I’m crass as f–k, and never sayin’ sorry/ Found out in the end that I can only do it for me.”
Dove Cameron also joins forces with Khalid on the sultry new collaboration “We Go Down Together,” Luke Combs follows up his debut on the Grammys stage with”Love You Anyway” off his upcoming album Gettin’ Old, D4vd unveils the heartsick, pleading “Placebo Effect” and Mariah Carey cashes in on the viral resurgence of “It’s a Wrap” by dedicating an entire EP to the Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel fan favorite.
Vote for your favorite new release of the week in Billboard‘s poll below.
Perhaps no album from a band in recent months has been as anticipated as Paramore‘s sixth studio set, This Is Why. The group, which currently consists of lead vocalist Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro, released their poppier, ’80s-tinged LP After Laughter in 2017 and later, took a break that resulted in the trio trading the sadness behind their rose-colored glasses for anger — and for what feels like the first time, political discontent.
“Everything is political, and it’s either politicized to a degree that maybe isn’t fair or it just inherently is political,” Williams said in the group’s recently Billboard cover story. “Even if I tried to not say one word about anything political [on the album], I think it was just in the DNA. It was in every conversation.”
And the group tackles the issues seamlessly, albeit with a new groove that sounds equal parts fresh and familiar to new and old fans alike. This Is Why‘s title track (also the first on the record) establishes the band’s mission statement, critiquing society’s lack of empathy and the human tendency to be unyielding with our beliefs. Follow up singles “The News” and “C’est Comme Ça” expands, with the former heaving an exasperated sigh at current events and the latter taking the aftermath with a resigned shrug of the shoulders. The preliminary songs the band offered — and the album as a whole — cut the weight of their themes with a danceable, punk leaning edge.
While there are no definite skips on the album, certain tracks of the group’s newest offering in years do stand out a bit more than others. Here is a preliminary opinion on every song that appears on Paramore’s This Is Why.
Want more on Paramore’s new album? Click here to read Billboard’s cover story with the band, in which they talk at length about This Is Why.
Twenty years after the release of Meteora, Linkin Park is revisiting their mega-selling sophomore album: Meteora 20th Anniversary Edition will be released through Warner Records on Apr. 7, the band announced on Friday (Feb. 10), and will include multiple previously unreleased songs in addition to several other fan-friendly collectibles.
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One of those unreleased songs, “Lost,” arrives today as a fleshed-out, fully realized showcase for the band’s Chester Bennington, who passed away in 2017. Linkin Park recorded “Lost” for Meteora but the track didn’t make the final track list; while scavenging through hard drives for the 20th anniversary of the album, the group rediscovered the song and Bennington’s intensely riveting vocals that serve as its highlight.
“Finding this track was like finding a favorite photo you had forgotten you’d taken, like it was waiting for the right moment to reveal itself,” the band’s Mike Shinoda says in a press statement. “For years, fans have been asking us to release something with Chester’s voice, and I’m thrilled we’ve been able to make that happen in such a special way. I think they’re going to be floored when they hear and see all the incredible unreleased songs and video footage in Meteora 20.”
“Lost” will be among six unreleased songs on Meteora 20, in addition to demos, live shows, B-sides and previously unaired footage with the band. The project will be available in multiple variations, including a limited edition super deluxe box set, deluxe vinyl box set, deluxe 3-CD and digital download.
The 20th anniversary reissue of Meteora follows the 2020 release of Hybrid Theory: 20th Anniversary Edition, which toasted Linkin Park’s diamond-selling 2000 debut. “It’s a nice time to pause and think and focus on what it took to make that record, the impact it had, and the opportunity it allowed us to continue with our careers,” the band’s Joe Hahn told Billboard at the time. “For me, it’s a testament to the camaraderie between all the guys in the band, to our friendship, to our work ethic, to the values in how we approached not just making music, but the business of making music, and the way we interact with our fans.”
Released in March 2003, Meteora includes some of Linkin Park’s most enduring hits, from “Numb” to “Breaking the Habit” to “Faint” to “Somewhere I Belong” to “Lying From You” — all of which topped Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart — as well as essential fan favorites like “Nobody’s Listening” and “Easier to Run.” Meteora has earned 8.5 million equivalent album units to date, of which 6.5 million are in traditional album sales, according to Luminate.
To celebrate the Meteora 20 announcement and the release of “Lost,” Linkin Park will relaunch their official Discord on Friday, with a Q&A on the Discord Stage. The band is also teasing “more surprises” leading up to the April release.
Watch the official video for “Lost” — which was produced and animated by by pplpleasr and Maciej Kuciara’s Web3 studio, Shibuya — below:
Paramore is finally back. The trio, consisting of Hayley Williams, Zac Farro and Taylor York, returned from their hiatus to their first album together in six years, This Is Why, via Atlantic Records on Friday (Feb. 10).
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“’This Is Why’ was the very last song we wrote for the album. To be honest, I was so tired of writing lyrics but Taylor convinced Zac and I both that we should work on this last idea,” Williams previously said of the album’s title track in a press release. “What came out of it was the title track for the whole album. It summarizes the plethora of ridiculous emotions, the rollercoaster of being alive in 2022, having survived even just the last three or four years. You’d think after a global pandemic of f—ing biblical proportions and the impending doom of a dying planet, that humans would have found it deep within themselves to be kinder or more empathetic or something.”
The last time Paramore released an album as a band was 2017’s After Laughter, which features songs like “Hard Times” and “Rose-Colored Boy.” Since then, Williams dropped her own solo album, Petals for Armor, in 2020 and Farro has unveiled a number of solo works under the moniker Halfnoise.
In January, Paramore appeared on Billboard‘s digital cover, where the trio discussed their return as a band. “At this point, I don’t understand how we’re still doing it,” Williams shared. “Because it just feels like against all odds every single time — which, honestly, I feel like we’re the most annoying band in the world because it’s always like, ‘Oh, we overcame this, and now we’re making this album.’”
The new album feature’s previously released singles “C’est Comme Ça,” “The News” and the title track. Listen to Paramore’s This Is Why in full below.
Depeche Mode unveiled their new single “Ghosts Again” on Thursday (Feb. 9) along with the track’s accompanying music video and new album Memento Mori‘s release date.
In the stark visual directed by Anton Corbijn, Dave Gahan and Martin Gore wield matching walking sticks topped with chrome-plated skulls before sitting down on an urban rooftop to face off in a game of chess.
“Wasted feelings, broken meanings/ Time is fleeting, see what it brings/ Hellos, goodbyes, a thousand midnights/ Lost in sleepless lullabies/ Heaven’s dreaming/ Thoughtless thoughts, my friends,” Gahan sings before his bandmate swoops in to deliver the final lyric of the chorus: “We know we’ll be ghosts again.”
“To me, ‘Ghosts Again’ just captures this perfect balance of melancholy and joy,” Gahan said in a statement. Added Gore, “It’s not often that we record a song that I just don’t get sick of listening to – I’m excited to be able to share it.”
The reflective, mid-tempo jam precedes the duo’s upcoming 15th studio album, Memento Mori, which is set to be released March 24 via Columbia Records. The LP will be the band’s first full-length since 2017’s Spirit, as well as the first since the passing of keyboardist and co-founder Andy Fletcher in May 2022.
The rollout for “Ghosts Again” was fraught with controversy among Depeche Mode’s fanbase. It all started with a countdown clock on the band’s social media accounts and website, seemingly pointing to the track’s release last Friday (Feb. 3), but instead was revealed that eager listeners would have to wait nearly another full week for the song’s grand unveiling.
Watch the stark music video for Depeche Mode’s “Ghosts Again” below.
Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time” tops multiple Billboard charts more than 50 years after its release, thanks to its inclusion in a recent episode of HBO’s The Last of Us.
“Time,” originally released on Ronstadt’s 1970 album Silk Purse, bows at No. 1 on the Rock Digital Song Sales, LyricFind U.S. and LyricFind Global rankings dated Feb. 11.
The LyricFind Global and LyricFind U.S. charts rank the fastest momentum-gaining tracks in lyric-search queries and usages globally and in the U.S., respectively, provided by LyricFind. The Global chart includes queries from all countries, including the U.S. The company is the world’s leader in licensed lyrics, with data provided by more than 5,000 publishers and utilized by more than 100 services, including Amazon, Pandora, Deezer, Microsoft, SoundHound and iHeartRadio.
After its synch in the Jan. 29 episode of the show, “Time” garnered lyric search and usage increases of 3,013% in the U.S and 2,074% globally in the Jan. 30-Feb. 5 tracking week, according to LyricFind.
Additionally, in the tracking period running Jan. 27-Feb. 2, the song earned 6,000 downloads in the U.S., according to Luminate, enough to place it atop the Rock Digital Song Sales ranking. Its jump was 11,181% from a negligible amount the prior week.
As previously reported, “Time” also appears at No. 6 on the Hot Trending Songs chart, powered by Twitter, for Feb. 11.
Its gains weren’t limited to sales, social media chatter and lyric usages. In the U.S., “Time” saw a 1,042% lift in official streams in the Jan. 27-Feb. 2 frame, to 903,000 streams from 79,000 the previous period.
The No. 1s mark the first rule on a Billboard chart for “Time,” which peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1970.
Its parent album, Silk Purse, also peaked at No. 103 on the Billboard 200 in November of that year.
It’s the second synch success for The Last of Us on the Billboard charts, following Depeche Mode‘s “Never Let Me Down Again,” which returned to multiple rankings after being heard in the series premiere two weeks prior.
Graham Nash suspects that David Crosby knew he was dying and wanted to make amends before it was too late. Nash said the former Crosby, Stills & Nash bandmates — who were famously estranged for years before Crosby passed last month at 81 — were in the midst of a rapprochement just before Crosby died of unknown causes on January 18.
“The fact is that we were getting a little closer at the end. He had sent me a voicemail saying that he wanted to talk to apologize, and could we set up a time to talk,” Nash told AARP magazine. “I emailed him back and said, ‘Okay, call me at eleven o’clock tomorrow your time, which is two o’clock on the East Coast.’ He never called, and then he was gone.”
It was a painful ending to a half century friendship and musical partnership that produced some of the indelible folk rock of the 20th century. But Nash said he is trying to focus on the love, and music, they shared. “I think one of the only things that we can do, particularly me, is only try to remember the good times,” Nash said. “Try to remember the great music that we made. I’m only going to be interested in the good times, because if I concentrate on the bad times, it gets too weird for me.”
Nash said Crosby reached out to him shortly before he died and he suspects the singer may have known the end was near. “Since his liver transplant and all his stents. He had seven stents. His body was really failing,” Nash said of Crosby, who was open about his long struggle with drug addiction. “But once again, I can only try to remember the good times, because we had many of them.”
Comparing his friend’s passing to an “earthquake,” Nash described the death setting off a series of smaller temblors, saying it took several days for the reality to really set in. “Crosby was my dear friend, my best friend for over 50 years. I can only concentrate on the good stuff,” he said, brushing aside the rifts that had grown between them over the years due to Crosby’s sometimes pointed comments about his former CSN (and CSN&Y) bandmates; in 2021, Crosby said in a scathing interview that he hadn’t spoken to Nash, or Neil Young, in years and didn’t plan to anytime soon.
“But if he was willing to call me and apologize for what he had done and how he had hurt me, it made his death a little easier for me to accept,” Nash said.
Asked what made Crosby’s musical style so singular Nash pointed to the singer’s “unbelievable uniqueness” as a musician, pointing to a jazz influence in David’s early days and “very strange” tunings he played in that made for a one-of-a-kind sound. “He really was in many ways the heartbeat of this band,” Nash said. “I mean, he was incredibly talented and unique as a musician. That’s what he brought… I have never heard anybody with the same brilliant sense of music and harmony that David had.”
Read the full interview here (requires log-in).
Blink-182 fans were curious when drummer Travis Barker tweeted out a four-letter expletive earlier this week with zero context. “F–k,” read his post from Tuesday, which led to a lot of questions, and, finally, an answer on Wednesday (Feb. 8).
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“I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments,” he explained along with a cursing face emoji. At press time it was unclear if the injury would have any impact on the band’s touring plans in support of their as-yet-untitled reunion album with twice former singer/guitarist Tom DeLonge; a spokesperson for the group had not returned requests for additional comment at press time.
In January, DeLonge teased that the collection is “the best album we’ve ever made,” assuring fans that they need to “buckle up.” Amping up the excitement, DeLonge added, “I’m personally tripping and so proud of what we have created TOGETHER. As one unified force of fun, eternal youth, and most of all- close friends.”
DeLonge — who rejoined the band in 2022 after leaving for a second time in 2014 — tagged bandmates drummer Travis Barker and singer/bassist Mark Hoppus in the post about the eagerly awaited follow-up to the trio’s 2019 album Nine, their second, and final, studio effort featuring fill-in third member Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio).
While a release date and title for the new album have not yet been announced, the collection’s first single, “EDGING,” has been a smash at alternative radio.
The reunited trio’s massive world tour is slated to kick off on March 11 in Tijuana, Mexico at the Imperial GNP festival and keep the band on the road in South America and Mexico through April 2 before shifting to North America on May 4 with a show at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota; those dates will run through a July 16 gig in Nashville at the Bridgestone Arena and then move on to Europe in September and Australia/New Zealand in early 2024.
See Barker’s tweets below.
I was playing the drums at rehearsals yesterday and I smashed my finger so hard I dislocated it and tore the ligaments 🤬— Travis Barker (@travisbarker) February 8, 2023
Rage Against the Machine received its latest nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame earlier this month, and Tom Morello finally reacted to the news in a new interview on Wednesday (Feb. 8).
“This is Rage Against the Machine’s fifth nomination. So always the bridesmaid, never the bride in a way,” he said in a joint sit-down with Måneskin for Audacy Check In. “It’s an honor, and it’s great for the fans, and it’s something my mom would be very happy (about).”
Other acts up for induction as part of the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2023 include Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes and Warren Zevon.
During the chat, the rock guitarist also offered up his assessment of the Italian newcomers, whom he joined on the band’s hard-charging new single “Gossip” from their recently released third studio album RUSH!, saying, “It’s an unusual thing in 2023 to have a rock and roll band that has songs on the radio. Then to have a song on the radio that has not one, but two guitar solos in it. It really is an anomaly in this day and age.”
The members of Måneskin only had great things to say about working with Morello in the studio, telling host Nicole Alvarez they learned from his “passion and not really giving a f–k about all these limits or anything. And that really inspired us and made us [think], like, ‘If a legend does it this way, then for me it’s right.’”
Watch the full interview with Morello and Måneskin below.
The Scorpions‘ iconic video for their 1990 power ballad “Wind of Change” has officially entered the YouTube billion views club. The black and white clip that opens with a haunting whistle over images of fans holding up sparklers is credited by some with helping to hasten the end of the decades long Cold War between the U.S. and former Soviet Union.
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In between footage of singer Klaus Meine crooning and a massive crowd holding up lighters, the video sprinkles in images of tanks rolling, economic disasters, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest in China and the fall of the Berlin Wall. “I follow the Moskva down to Gorky Park/ Listening to the winds of change/ An August summer night, soldiers passing by/ Listening to the winds of change,” Meine sings on the track from the band’s Crazy World album that is the band’s first video to pass the billion mark.
The power ballad that peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 tally and became the best-selling single by a German artist was written during a 1989 visit to Moscow; the previous year the band became the second-ever Western rock band to play in Russia when they performed in Leningrad on their Savage Amusement tour.
They returned in August 1989 for that summer’s Moscow Music Peace Festival — which also featured Ozzy Osbourne, Cinderella, Motley Crue, Skid Row and headliners Bon Jovi — where they said they were inspired by seeing thousands of young Russian fans cheering for a West German rock band. When the Berlin Wall fell in Nov. 1989, “Wind of Change” became a kind of unofficial anthem of German reunification.
The song was the subject of an eight-part 2020 podcast of the same name hosted by Patrick Radden Keefe that looked into the rumors that American intelligence officers were secretly behind the writing of the tune as part of an effort to end the Cold War. And while the band has never confirmed or refuted the rumors on the record, in the series an unnamed former spy told journalist and author Keefe that it was not out of the question that the CIA dabbled in subversive songwriting.
“In fact, I’d be somewhat surprised if they weren’t still doing that sort of thing today,” the source said in the podcast. “I’ll leave it to you to wonder which acts that might be.”
Check out “Winds of Change” below.