Rock
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Welcome to the jungle! Carrie Underwood is set to join rock band Guns N’ Roses for three shows on the North American leg of the group’s 2023 Global Tour. Alice in Chains, The Pretenders, The Warning and Dirty Honey are also joining the trek.
The country star will open for the rockers during two shows in Canada (Aug. 5 in Moncton, New Brunswick, and Aug. 8 in Montreal, Quebec), followed by a show on Aug. 26 in Nashville at GEODIS Park.
“SO ready for this!” the American Idol season four champ gushed in an Instagram post announcing her addition to the tour. “I CANNOT WAIT!!”
Underwood has long incorporated songs from Guns N’ Roses’ classic rock catalog — such as “Welcome to the Jungle” — into her own concert setlists, and welcomed lead singer Axl Rose as her surprise guest during her headlining set at the Stagecoach music festival in 2022, where the two performed “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City.”
Later that year, Guns N’ Roses later welcomed Underwood to reprise those same songs during Guns N’ Roses’ London concert.
This marks the first time Guns N’ Roses has toured North America since their We’re F’N Back! Tour in 2021. The tour launches overseas on June 5 in Tel Aviv, Israel, and continues through Europe through July 22, wrapping in Athens, Greece. The band then continues on to North America, starting Aug. 5 for the Moncton, NB show at Medavie Blue Cross Stadium. The tour traverses several U.S. states and wraps on Oct. 16 at BC Place in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Underwood previously told Jimmy Fallon about meeting Guns N’ Roses for the first time, during one of the band’s concerts in Las Vegas.
“I might have, like, hung out with Axl after the show a little bit!” she joked. “I do always say that it’s hard when you meet your heroes, because I do consider him to be somebody who taught me how to sing, because I loved how he could just do different things with his voice. I was like, ‘I don’t know! If I meet him, and he’s not everything I want him to be…’ But he was. It was great. He was super cool and nice, and we talked — we’re best friends.”
See her post announcing her dates on the Guns N’ Roses tour below:
Dave Grohl went back home on Tuesday night (May 31) to play a very special show at the new Washington, D.C. venue: The Atlantis. The 450-capacity room is a replica of the city’s legendary 9:30 Club, which during its heyday hosted everyone from hometown heroes Fugazi to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and even Bob Dylan.
But on Tuesday night, the Foo Fighters took a break from playing arenas to set up shop at the cozy club for a 22-song, two-hour set that opened with an onstage reunion between Grohl and his former Scream bandmate Pete Stahl, according to Consequence of Sound. The old friends played “Live at the Atlantis,” a song by another D.C. bold name, hardcore legends Bad Brains, before the FF dipped into a mostly greatest hits set.
The set also included Grohl’s daughter and frequent backup singer Violet singing on “Shame Shame” and “Rope,” as well as 9:30 Club owner Seth Hurwitz joining the band to drum on “Big Me. CoS reported that Grohl referred to his days as a teen attending shows at the old 9:30, which he never played, but which new drummer Josh Freese had with his band, the Vandals, as had keyboardist Rami Jaffee with the Wallflowers.
At one point Grohl thanked the crowd for helping the Foos carry on following the tragic death of beloved drummer Taylor Hawkins last year at age 50, and then dedicated a performance of “Aurora” to his late best friend and bandmate.
NBC 4 reported that Grohl and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser attended a grand opening ceremony where Hurwitz cut a guitar string at the venue’s door to christen the new club on the location of the original, which first opened in 1980. Hurwitz also helped unveil a life-size statue of Grohl made of found objects. “I got to witness hundreds of bands that inspired me to become a musician myself,” Grohl said during the ceremony, adding that seeing those show gave him “that feeling of being in this sort of tribe, like we were all in on this big secret.”
“Dave won’t just be christening the room – he’ll be honoring the legacy of a space he attended as a kid and later took the stage of with bands like Scream and Nirvana,” The Atlantis said in a statement. The $10-million club will host a series of other underplays this year as part of its grand opening celebration, including shows from Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Parliament Funkadelic and Barenaked Ladies.
The Foos are slated to play at Germany’s Rock Am Ring Festival on June 2.
Check out some video from the show below.
Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters was on hand for the unveiling of his sculpture at D.C.’s newest concert venue, The Atlantis. What do you all think of the artwork? pic.twitter.com/BRWQZLi6aO— WUSA9 (@wusa9) May 30, 2023
Joe Trohman is back in the band. Four months after announcing he’d be taking a break from Fall Out Boy to work on his mental health, the guitarist revealed on Tuesday (May 30) that he’s ready to get back onstage. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “Hey everyone, I’m […]
Gorillaz is heading out on the road for a special tour this fall. On Tuesday (May 30), the group announced The Getaway 2023 tour, which is scheduled to take place in September. The limited run of shows will take place across four dates in the United States — as explained in the tour’s official description […]
Metallica may be the last, true Monster of Rock: one of the few massively popular rock bands whose tours aren’t self-consciously nostalgic. The group’s Black Album (1991’s Metallica) is the best-selling album in the U.S. since 1991 (the beginning of what was then called the SoundScan Era), and the outfit is popular, successful and independent enough to buy its own vinyl pressing plant. These days, young fans are more apt to discover the band from the Stranger Things scene that used “Master of Puppets” than radio airplay. But acts that stream many times as much can’t play multiple nights at stadiums, let alone in a way that brings back many of the same fans.
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Metallica’s M72 World Tour – which started in late April in Amsterdam but began in earnest on May 17 in Paris and runs through September 2024 – rewards the faithful with two-night stands at stadiums, and a “no repeats” promise not to do the same song twice in each city. Two-night ticket packages went on sale first, and a quick look around during the Friday (May 26) show at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany, made it clear that this wasn’t the first show for most people there – and in more than a few cases, not one of their first half dozen. A substantial number of fans came from elsewhere in Germany to see both shows – some for one of six “enhanced experiences,” like a meet-and-greet or special seating. It was an audience that was eager but not easy to impress.
The staging for Metallica’s tour is built to do just that, though, on the kind of grand scale well-suited for football stadiums. The band performs in the round, on a big stage in the shape of a ring that surrounds fans with tickets to the VIP “snake pit.” That means anyone on the floor isn’t actually all that far from the band – but also that the traditional video screen setup doesn’t work. So the band put the screens, and most speakers, on eight massive towers to allow anyone to see them. During some songs, the colors were bleached out, making the footage one-hued to underscore the drama. Most bands would seem dwarfed by the scale, but Metallica rose to the occasion. More space just means more space to conquer.
The band opened with some ’80s favorites – “Creeping Death,” then “Harvester of Sorrow” and “Leper Messiah.” Only then did frontman James Hetfield actually say anything – the kind of welcome you give to an audience you’ve seen before. “Here’s a song you might not know,” he said. “I hope I know it.” It was “Until It Sleeps,” from Load, and he need not have worried – it sounded familiar to everyone. The band played three songs from its vital new album, 72 Seasons – the title track, “If Darkness Had a Son,” and “You Must Burn!” – but the focus was on early, heavier songs and classics from the Black Album. Some acts have eras, but Metallica has epochs, and every single one of them is heavy in its own way.
The only drawback to the band’s over-the-top staging was that the same scale that made it so spectacular drained a bit of the band’s chemistry. With multiple microphones and several drum sets for Lars Ulrich – one would disappear beneath the stage and another would come up so he could play while facing another part of the crowd – everyone could see everything, but not always at the same time. The ring was so big that “Wherever I May Roam” (stark and dramatic as ever, toward the end of the show) could have been self-referential. But Metallica wanted to out-do itself, and it did. This kind of maximalism is only silly if you can’t carry it off – and Metallica does.
By stadium standards, the band keeps the music fresh, too. Sure, it has enough classics to spread over two nights – “One” and “Welcome Sandman” on May 26, “Blackened” and “Master of Puppets” two days later – but it also pulled out “Whiskey in the Jar,” a traditional-by-way-of Thin Lizzy song that sounded very human even at this gigantic scale. For at least a few minutes, the stadium felt like the world’s biggest bar – if you can imagine a bar with eight 14-ton video towers – and if any crowd deserved a drinking song it was this one.
After “Whiskey” the band turned to “One” and then “Enter Sandman,” ferocious metal song that has acquired the patina of classic rock. There would be more surprises in two days at the next show, and the crowd pondered the possibilities as it filed out of the venue – more classics, a rarity, who knows? Like the best big rock shows, it would feel familiar but sound fresh. It was live but also, somehow, much bigger.
Royal Blood’s set at a music festival in Scotland turned into a royal mess as the band blasted the crowd and walked off, with frontman Mike Kerr raising his middle fingers as a departing gift. The English rock duo performed late afternoon Sunday (May 28) at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend 2023 Dundee.As the band neared the end of their performance, Kerr gave the audience a serve for a perceived lack of enthusiasm.“Well, I guess I should introduce ourselves seeing as no one actually knows who we are,” the 32-year-old artist said in a video doing the rounds of social media. “We’re called Royal Blood and this is rock music. Who likes rock music? Nine people, brilliant,” he remarked, sarcastically.
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Introducing drummer Ben Thatcher, he added, “We’re having to clap ourselves because that was so pathetic. Well done, Ben.”
Kerr then stared down the side-of-stage camera and appeared to ask the operator: “Will you clap for us? You clap? You’re busy. Can you clap? Yes, even he’s clapping.” He turned to the audience, “What does that say about you?”
Then, Kerr let rip with an off-color chord as they walked off stage, his middle fingers held high to the audience.
Some fans have pointed out that Royal Blood was stuck in a tricky schedule, wedged between pop stars Niall Horan and Lewis Capaldi, whose sophomore album Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent is currently No. 1 in the U.K.
Other social media users have pointed out on that, yes, sometimes the crowd isn’t moved, and artists should roll with it.
The band’s fourth studio album, Back to the Water Below, is due out Sept. 8 through Warner Records.
A busy touring schedule through the U.K. and Europe should set up the release, including a performance at Glastonbury Festival, June 21-25, and a return to Scotland for TRNSMT Festival 2023, set for July 9 in Glasgow.
All three of their previous albums have gone to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Chart: Royal Blood (2014), How Did We Get So Dark (2017) and Typhoons (2021).
Watch Royal Blood’s unusual exit from stage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend.
Keanu Reeves dismisses the idea that playing bass in his long-defunct rock trio, Dogstar, was a passion project that he hoped to make time for in between a prolific Hollywood career. “It’s not ‘make time for it,’” he tells Billboard, his hair shagging into his eyes, during a Zoom call earlier this week. “It’s something that’s part of my life.”
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Although Dogstar hadn’t released an album in over two decades — 23 years and four John Wick films ago — Reeves says that a proper reunion with his pals Bret Domrose and Rob Mailhouse had been on his mind for a while. “I missed playing together, I missed writing together, I missed doing shows together. It’s something I’ve always missed,” he admits. “We came to a spot where we weren’t playing anymore, and I missed it … Once we started to play, and it felt good, and really positive and creative, that’s when it was like, ‘Okay, let’s make this happen.’”
The reunion of Dogstar — which has been teased since last July, when their Instagram account declared, “We’re back” — finally comes into focus this weekend, when the trio takes the stage for their first public performance together at BottleRock Napa Valley music festival on Saturday (May 27). The band will play a mix of older songs from their previous studio albums, 1996’s Our Little Visionary and 2000’s Happy Ending, as well as unveil cuts from a forthcoming, as-yet-untitled album — which was always part of the plan when the reunion became official.
“I think all three of us just said, ‘Well, if we’re going to do this, let’s make a record,’” says Reeves. Singer-guitarist Domrose adds, “We just knew that there was ‘X’ amount of time, and we needed to make the most of it. We just locked on as wanting to make this record, and it happened pretty quickly.”
Reeves, Domrose and Mailhouse kept in touch over the years after Dogstar played its final show together in 2002. “We’ve sort of been sporadically getting together, because we’re all friends,” Mailhouse explains. The three would occasionally meet up in the rehearsal space of drummer Mailhouse’s home in Silver Lake to jam, but would seldom come up with new song ideas.
During the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, however, those jam sessions became a bit more concentrated: house visits turned into shared quarantining, and with travel restricted, soon the trio were “stuck together, like we were at camp,” as Mailhouse puts it, and logging eight-hour rehearsal days together. Reeves adds, “We played the catalog songs, and then we can’t help it — we just started writing.” Within two and a half months, the guys had written more songs than they needed for Dogstar’s third studio album.
The timing and release details of the Happy Ending follow-up have yet to be announced, although the band members are confident that they and producer Dave Trumfio (Wilco, Built To Spill) have located a sound that will satisfy new listeners as well as longtime fans who have been waiting for their return. “[Dave] understood where we were coming from,” says Mailhouse, “and worked really well with Bret, layering guitars and doing lots of different sounds and ambient things — things that weren’t just hard rock, in-your-face music, [but] a little more textural.”
Dogstar has played private performances since reuniting, but Saturday’s set at BottleRock marks their years-in-the-making return to the spotlight, and the first of what they hope to be many more shows. The trio says that they’re too excited to feel jittery. “I’m sure as the hour grows closer, I’m gonna get much more nervous,” Domrose says with a laugh.
For Reeves, who joined the band as a rising Hollywood star and returns to it as one of the most consistent leading actors of the century, Dogstar represents a passion that he’s thrilled to return to in a real way after all these years. “It’s a space that I love,” he says, “and a space that I tried to protect.”
The first No. 1 for boygenius on a Billboard songs chart is “Not Strong Enough,” which lifts to the top of the Adult Alternative Airplay tally dated June 3.
The track also marks the first trip to No. 1 on an airplay ranking for each member of the three-piece band, featuring Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.
As soloists, Bridgers boasts the best rank of the group on the chart, thanks to “Sidelines,” which hit No. 12 in July 2022. Dacus has reached a No. 13 best in September 2021 with “Brando,” followed by Baker with “Faith Healer” (No. 14, March 2021).
Concurrently, “Not Strong Enough” jumps into the top 20 of Alternative Airplay (23-20). It’s the first top 20 entry for the group; Bridgers reached No. 25 with “Kyoto” in February 2021.
On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, “Not Strong Enough” lifts 15-14 with 2.2 million audience impressions May 19-25, according to Luminate.
On the most recently published, May 27-dated multi-metric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs survey, “Not Strong Enough” ranked at its No. 29 high. In addition to its radio airplay, the song earned 1.4 million official U.S. streams May 12-18.
The Record, boygenius’ debut full-length album, which includes “Not Strong Enough,” bowed at No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums chart dated April 15 and has earned 162,000 equivalent album units to date.
The set also started at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard 200. “We were told, if we were lucky, maybe we were going to break top 10. And then it was, actually, maybe we could break top five,” Dacus recently told Billboard, noting that Bridgers shared the news of the LP’s debut rank as they were practicing. “We celebrated by playing the songs.”
All June 3-dated Billboard charts will update on Billboard.com on Wednesday, May 31.
When there are absolutely zero f’s left to give, somehow Noel Gallagher always finds a way to give one less f. A prime example is a new interview in Spin about Gallagher’s latest album with his band the High Flying Birds, Council Skies, that veered into a very on-brand takedown of the latest calls for an Oasis reunion.
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When the interviewer asked Gallagher, 55, if he’d heard about the Feb. interview in which The 1975 singer Matty Healy said Noel and his estranged brother Oasis singer Liam Gallagher owe it to their fans to get over their squabbles and reunite, well, Noel got went supersonic on Taylor Swift’s reported current boyfriend.
“Oh, that f–king slack-jawed f–kwit. What did he say?” Noel asked when the subject came up. To wit, the interviewer quoted Healy saying, “Can you imagine being in potentially, right now, still the coolest band in the world and not doing it because you’re in a mard with your brother?”
Noel’s response was as barbed as you’d expect. “He would never be able to imagine it. He needs to go over how s–t his band is and split up,” Gallagher said. Sounds like yet another hard no from the man who penned “Don’t Look Back in Anger.”
And, Healy being Healy, back in Feb. he also had much more to say about his dreams of a comeback from the sibling group that split in 2009 and who’ve spent the past decade-plus endlessly sniping at each other while pursuing their solo careers.
“I can deal with them dressing like they’re in their 20s and being in their 50s, but acting like they’re in their 20s — they need to grow up,” Healy said at the time. “They’re sat around in Little Venice and Little Highgate, crying because they’re in an argument with their brother. Grow up; headline Glastonbury. There is not one person going to a High Flying Birds gig, or a Liam Gallagher gig, that wouldn’t rather be at an Oasis gig. Do me a favor: Get back together; stop messing around. That’s my public service announcement for today.”
In good news for Oasis fans not named Matty or Healy, Noel said he’s still planning to play some Oasis songs on the Birds’ upcoming North American tour, which kicks off on June 2 in Seattle. “I’m digging out some old songs this time, and they do sound good. So yeah, I’m looking forward to it,” he said.
As for that AI Oasis album that dropped earlier this year, yeah, you can imagine Noel’s thoughts. “F–king embarrassing. I just think people clearly have too much time and money on their hands if they’re f–king around with that for a laugh,” he said of the one-off from British band Breezer, who wrote an Oasis sound-alike album during lockdown that features their playing and an AI voice that mimics Liam’s classic vocals. “I mean, who wants to f–king hear Ringo Starr singing ‘She’s Electric’ and Freddie Mercury singing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger?’,” Noel huffed. “Life’s too short for that s–t.”
For the record, in predictable contrarian Gallagher fashion, Liam dubbed the AISIS album “mad as f—k,” bragging that “I sound mega.”
The world is mourning the loss of Tina Turner, who died on Wednesday (May 24) at 83. The news of Turner’s death was confirmed to Billboard and in a statement posted to her official Instagram account. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Tina Turner. With her music and her boundless […]