State Champ Radio

by DJ Frosty

Current track

Title

Artist

Current show
blank

State Champ Radio Mix

1:00 pm 7:00 pm

Current show
blank

State Champ Radio Mix

1:00 pm 7:00 pm


Rock

Page: 151

Foo Fighters tie Shinedown for the most top 10s in the history of Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, as “Rescued” zooms from No. 11 to No. 5 on the May 13-dated tally.
“Rescued” is the Foos’ 30th top 10, tying the band with Shinedown for the most upper-chart hits dating back to the ranking’s 1981 inception.

The Dave Grohl-led band first reached the chart’s top 10 with its breakthrough hit “This Is a Call,” which reached No. 6 in August 1995. Prior to “Rescued,” it had last reached the top 10 with the No. 3-peaking “Love Dies Young” in March 2022.

Of Foo Fighters’ 30 top 10s, 11 have reached No. 1, most recently one-week ruler “Making a Fire” in September 2021.

Most Top 10s, Mainstream Rock Airplay:30, Foo Fighters30, Shinedown29, Five Finger Death Punch28, Godsmack28, Tom Petty (solo and with the Heartbreakers)26, Metallica26, Van Halen25, Disturbed25, Papa Roach

Shinedown broke out of a prior tie with Foo Fighters for the most Mainstream Rock Airplay top 10s and became the first act to reach 30 with “Dead Don’t Die,” which reached No. 2 in March and currently ranks at No. 6.

Concurrently, “Rescued” lifts 5-4 on Alternative Airplay — where Foo Fighters set a new mark for the most top 10s (29) a week earlier – and leaps 40-16 on Adult Alternative Airplay.

On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, “Rescued” remains at its No. 2 high with 9 million audience impressions, up 14%, according to Luminate. Two weeks earlier, the band also garnered a share, again with Shinedown, of the chart’s top 10 record (15 each) with the single.

“Rescued” ranks at No. 3 on the multi-metric Hot Hard Rock Songs survey. In addition to its radio airplay in the tracking week, the song earned 905,000 official U.S. streams and sold 1,000 downloads.

“Rescued” is the lead single from But Here We Are, Foo Fighters’ 11th studio LP and the band’s first since the March 2022 death of drummer Taylor Hawkins. The album is due out June 2.

Streams, sales and radio airplay of Gordon Lightfoot’s catalog jumped by triple-digit percentages following the Canadian singer-songwriter’s death.
In the April 28-May 4 tracking week, official on-demand U.S. streams of Lightfoot’s music ballooned 290% to 14 million, according to Luminate, from 3.6 million the prior week (April 21-27).

Additionally, Lightfoot’s catalog moved 41,000 song downloads, a 3,629% surge from 1,000 the previous frame.

His overall album consumption totaled 20,000 equivalent album units, up 511% from 3,000. Of that sum, 6,000 units were via album sales.

Lightfoot’s radio airplay audience vaulted by 317% to 3 million impressions, from 730,000.

The influx of interest in Lightfoot’s deep catalog — he first reached a Billboard chart in 1969 — sparks his appearances on multiple surveys dated May 13. That haul includes the No. 1-selling track in the United States, as “If You Could Read My Mind” bows atop Digital Song Sales with 10,000 sold, up 4,162%.

Additionally, “Sundown” (9,000 sold, up 2,976%), “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (7,000, up 3,429%) and “Carefree Highway” (4,000, up 4,283%) also enter the top 10, at Nos. 3, 5 and 10, respectively.

The four songs encompass Lightfoot’s career Billboard Hot 100 top 10s. “Mind” reached No. 5 in February 1971, “Sundown” reigned for a week in June 1974, “Highway” hit No. 10 that November; and “Edmund Fitzgerald” peaked at No. 2 in November 1976.

All four songs appear on Rock Digital Song Sales at Nos. 1-3 and 5, respectively. They’re joined by 1975’s “The Soul Is the Rock” (No. 12; 2,000 sold).

“Sundown” leads a trio of Lightfoot songs on the multimetric Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart (where older titles are eligible to appear if in the top half with a meaningful reason for their resurgences). The song bows at No. 11, with its download sales joined by 3.3 million streams, up 64%.

“Mind” (No. 17; 2.1 million streams, up 99%) and “Edmund Fitzgerald” (No. 20; 1.9 million streams, up 127%) also enter the survey.

“Sundown,” “Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Highway” and “Rock” reach Country Digital Song Sales, at Nos. 2, 3, 5 and 13, respectively.

On the all-format Billboard 200, Lightfoot’s Gord’s Gold collection returns at No. 95 thanks to 11,000 units, up 3,086%. It’s the set’s first appearance on the chart since January 1977, after it reached No. 34 a year earlier.

Gord’s Gold also reaches Americana/Folk Albums (No. 3) and Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Country Albums (No. 17 on both).

Multiple Lightfoot songs dot Billboard’s LyricFind charts, which rank the fastest momentum-gaining tracks in lyric-search queries and usages globally and in the U.S., provided by LyricFind. “Sundown” leads the way at No. 1 on LyricFind U.S. with an 884% increase in lyric searches and usages following Lightfoot’s death, according to LyricFind.

Lightfoot died of natural causes in Toronto May 1 at age 84.

The National rules Billboard’s Top Rock & Alternative Albums chart dated May 13 for a fifth total and consecutive time with its new album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein.
The release bows with 32,000 equivalent album units earned in its first week, April 28-May 4, including 24,000 via album sales, according to Luminate.

With 15,000 copies sold on vinyl, the set also debuts atop Vinyl Albums, where it’s the group’s fourth No. 1.

The Matt Berninger-fronted band’s Top Rock & Alternative Albums No. 1 streak dates to High Violet in May 2010. In between that set and First Two Pages of Frankenstein, the five-piece reigned with three other sets, also for a week each: Trouble Will Find Me (June 2013), Sleep Well Beast (September 2017) and I Am Easy to Find (June 2019).

The new set also bows at No. 1 on the Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts.

Concurrently, the LP’s “The Alcott,” featuring Taylor Swift, enters Hot Rock & Alternative Songs at No. 13, thanks to 2.9 million official U.S. streams and 4,000 sold. The song is the album’s next single at adult alternative radio.

The set’s lead single, “Tropic Morning News,” led the Adult Alternative Airplay chart for a career-high five weeks, beginning on the March 18-dated list. It became the band’s second No. 1, among five top 10s, on the tally, after two-week ruler “The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness” in August 2017.

“News” also hit No. 25 on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart and No. 28 on Alternative Airplay.

Dolly Parton‘s long-awaited first rock album, Rockstar, has a release date: Nov. 17. The country icon, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s class of 2022, brings along a who’s-who of her fellow artist collaborators on the album, including Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, Lizzo, Sting, Chris Stapleton, Debbie Harry, Elton John, John Fogerty, Joan Jett, Steven Tyler, Peter Frampton and Kid Rock. The sprawling 30-track album features nine original tracks and 21 rock anthems, including “Free Bird,” “Purple Rain” and “We Are the Champions.”

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

Sting joins on The Police’s 1983 hit “Every Breath You Take,” while Joan Jett and the Blackhearts are on the 1988 hit “I Hate Myself for Loving You.” Stapleton and Parton will offer up the Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band classic “Night Moves,” while “Let It Be” will feature Parton with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton and Mick Fleetwood.

Meanwhile, the cover art features strong ’80s vibes, with Parton sitting on a motorcycle, holding a black guitar and clad in a black, studded-leather outfit slightly reminiscent of the one she wore during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Rockstar will be available as a four-LP set, a two-CD set and via digital download and on all streaming services.

“I’m so excited to finally present my first rock n’ roll album, Rockstar!” Parton said via a statement. “I am very honored and privileged to have worked with some of the greatest iconic singers and musicians of all time, and to be able to sing all the iconic songs throughout the album was a joy beyond measure. I hope everybody enjoys the album as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together!”

On Thursday, May 11, Parton will debut her first single from the album during the 58th annual Academy of Country Music Awards. She will also join Garth Brooks as they host the awards show, which will stream around the world live on Prime Video beginning at 7 p.m. CT from The Ford Center in Frisco, Texas.

See the full track listing for Rockstar below:

“Rockstar” (special guest Richie Sambora)

“World on Fire”

“Every Breath You Take” (feat. Sting)

“Open Arms” (feat. Steve Perry)

“Magic Man” (feat. Ann Wilson with special guest Howard Leese)

“Long As I Can See the Light’ (feat. John Fogerty)

“Either Or” (feat. Kid Rock)

“I Want You Back” (feat. Steven Tyler with special guest Warren Haynes)

“What Has Rock and Roll Ever Done for You” (feat. Stevie Nicks with special guest Waddy Wachtel)

“Purple Rain”

“Baby, I Love Your Way” (feat. Peter Frampton)

“I Hate Myself for Loving You” (feat. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts)

“Night Moves” (feat. Chris Stapleton)

“Wrecking Ball” (feat. Miley Cyrus)

“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (feat. P!nk & Brandi Carlile)

“Keep on Loving You” (feat. Kevin Cronin)

“Heart of Glass” (feat. Debbie Harry)

“Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” (feat. Elton John)

“Tried to Rock and Roll Me” (feat. Melissa Etheridge)

“Stairway to Heaven” (feat. Lizzo & Sasha Flute)

“We Are the Champions”

“Bygones” (feat. Rob Halford with special guests Nikki Sixx & John 5)

My Blue Tears (feat. Simon Le Bon)

“What’s Up?” (feat. Linda Perry)

“You’re No Good” (feat. Emmylou Harris & Sheryl Crow)

“Heartbreaker” (feat. Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo)

“Bittersweet” (feat. Michael McDonald)

“I Dreamed About Elvis” (feat. Ronnie McDowell with special guest The Jordanaires)

“Let It Be” (feat. Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr with special guests Peter Frampton & Mick Fleetwood)

“Free Bird” (feat. Ronnie Van Zant with special guests Gary Rossington, Artimus Pyle and The Artimus Pyle Band)

The Cure‘s Robert Smith is not done fighting the good fight on behalf of his band’s fans. The British goth rock legend who is about the launch his Shows of a Lost World North American tour in New Orleans on Wednesday (May 10) posted a series of tweets on Monday (May 8) in which he lashed out at a bill under consideration by the Louisiana legislature (HB 341) that would restrict the resale of tickets between fans.

“THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE (HB #341) IS CONSIDERING A RESELLERS-BACKED BILL TO BAN FAN-TO-FAN EXCHANGES (LIKE THE ONE WE ARE USING ON OUR 2023 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TO TRY AND LIMIT/STOP SCALPING AND BOTS),” Smith said of the bill sponsored by Republican Paula P. Davis that has already passed the GOP-dominated State House which would allow tickets to concerts and sporting events to be legally resold at a profit under specified conditions.

Smith noted that the bill is now headed to the State Senate — which also features a GOP majority — with a hearing scheduled for Wednesday morning. “LOUISIANA LAWMAKERS! PLEASE DON’T PASS THIS BILL! EMPOWER THE ARTISTS, NOT THE SCALPERS AND THE BOTS!,” the singer wrote. “COMMERCIAL LOBBYING CORRUPTS DEMOCRACY X.”

Am abstract of the bill reads: “Proposed law provides for certain definitions with respect to event ticketing. Additionally, proposed law defines ‘nontransferable ticketing’ as prohibiting the resell or exchange of a ticket or limiting the ticket holder to exchange the ticket exclusively through means provided by the ticket issuer. Proposed law provides that a ticket issuer may use a nontransferable ticketing system only if the ticket holder is offered to purchase the same ticket in a transferable form at the initial time of sale.”

Smith’s issues with the proposed bill make sense given his recent broadsides against what he called Ticketmaster’s exorbitant extra fees on tickets for the band’s tour. Earlier this year the bandleader said he’d hoped to keep seat-buying fair and simple for fans by opting out of TM’s dynamic pricing model while shielding them against scalpers with non-transferable tickets. But when the sale opened mid-March, disappointed customers found that TM had added sky-high fees to tickets that sometimes totaled more than the face-value price of the original tickets.

In a series of follow-up tweets, Smith revealed that approximately 7,000 tickets across more than 2,000 orders had been canceled in early April, with the bandleader claiming those tickets were acquired with fake accounts and/or listed on secondary resale sites.

See Smith’s tweets below.

THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATURE (HB #341) IS CONSIDERING A RESELLERS-BACKED BILL TO BAN FAN-TO-FAN EXCHANGES (LIKE THE ONE WE ARE USING ON OUR 2023 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TO TRY AND LIMIT/STOP SCALPING AND BOTS). THE BILL HAS ALREADY PASSED THE HOUSE…— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) May 9, 2023

…AND IS UP FOR CONSIDERATION IN THE STATE SENATE. THERE IS A HEARING THIS WEDNESDAY MORNING… LOUISIANA LAWMAKERS! PLEASE DON’T PASS THIS BILL! EMPOWER THE ARTISTS, NOT THE SCALPERS AND THE BOTS! #ShowsOfALostWorld2023— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) May 9, 2023

COMMERCIAL LOBBYING CORRUPTS DEMOCRACY X— ROBERT SMITH (@RobertSmith) May 9, 2023

Kendrick Lamar, Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, Shania Twain (weekend one only), The Lumineers, Odesza, Alanis Morissette and The 1975 (weekend two only) will headline this fall’s Austin City Limits festival. The 22nd annual event at Austin’s Zilker Park will take place over two weekends — Oct. 6-8 and Oct. 13-15 — and also feature performances from Hozier, Kali Uchis, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Maggie Rogers, Labrinth, Cigarettes After Sex, Niall Horan, Tove Lo and Thirty Seconds to Mars, among others.

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

In a release announcing the nine-stage fest, organizers noted that this year’s diverse lineup includes 45% female performers, LGBTQ+ artists, allies and icons as well as a number of Latin stars, including Ivan Cornejo, Kevin Knaarl, Eddie Zuko and others.

Three-day tickets for both weekends go on sale on Tuesday (May 9) at 1 p.m. ET here with layaway plans available starting at $25 down and, new for this year, a promise of no surprise fees at checkout. One-day general admission tickets, one-day Ga+ tickets and one-day tickets will be available at a later date. GA ticket holders will have a new experience this year, with premium cocktails for sale on bar menus throughout the festival and GA+ tickets including a full-service bar with preferred pricing for all beer, seltzers, wine and cocktails.

ACL’s focus on homegrown Texas talent will continue this year, with acts including The Mars Volta, Tanya Tucker, Ben Kweller, d4dv, Jimmy Vaughn, Asleep at the Wheel, Penny & Sparrow, Randall King, Abraham Alexander, Angel White, BigXThaPlug and many more. Hulu will be back as the official streaming partner for the fest, with three days of select live performances, interviews and more available during weekend one; a full broadcast lineup and schedule will be announced at a later date.

Other acts slated to perform at this year’s ACL include: Noah Kahan, Lil Yachty, Mt. Joy, The Revivalists, Portugal. The Man, Death Grips, M83, Rina Sawayama, Tash Sultana, Coi Leray, Glorilla, Little Simz, Chromeo, Tegan and Sara, The Breeders, The Walkmen, Suki Waterhouse, Morgan Wade, Jessie Ware and many more.

Check out the full lineup below.

Thirty Seconds to Mars is back. The group, consisting of brothers Shannon and Jared Leto, revealed on Monday (May 8) that their upcoming sixth studio album, It’s the End of the World But It’s a Beautiful Day, is set for release this September via Concord Records.

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

To celebrate the announcement, the band unveiled the album’s lead single, a powerful, high-energy track called “Stuck.” The accompanying, Jared-directed music video is inspired by the human form and combines high fashion with art for a sleek, minimalistic result.

“Thanks to my incredibly creative mother, my brother and I were instilled with a love for art and photography from a very young age,” Jared said in a press statement. “The video for ‘Stuck,’ our first new song in five years, is a love letter to some of my favorite photographers. Artists who made a very deep impact on me like Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus, Herb Ritts and more. Artists whose work changed the way I saw things and showed me new possibilities at every turn.”

“Stuck” marks Thirty Seconds to Mars’ first new music in five years, and It’s the End of the World follows the group’s 2018 album, America. Later this month, Thirty Seconds to Mars will be taking the main stage at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend and, in August, the band will be making their return to Lollapalooza for the first time since 2006. They’re also set to perform at When We Were Young Festival in Las Vegas in October.

Watch the “Stuck” music video below.

Papa Roach reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart for the ninth time as “Cut the Line” lifts to the top of the May 13-dated survey.

“Cut the Line” is the second No. 1 in a row for the veteran rockers, following the one-week reign of “No Apologies” in September 2022.

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

The Jacoby Shaddix-fronted band first led Mainstream Rock Airplay for six weeks in 2009 with “Lifeline.” Its career on the tally stretches back to its first entry, “Last Resort,” which hit No. 4 in 2000. The band has notched 25 top 10s on the chart.

“Cut the Line” is Papa Roach’s third No. 1 from its 2022 album Ego Trip, with the set’s first ruler being “Kill the Noise,” for four weeks in late 2021. An additional single, “Stand Up,” peaked at No. 12 in April 2022.

Concurrently, “Cut the Line” holds at its No. 10 high on the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart with 2.6 million audience impressions in the week ending May 4, according to Luminate.

The song also appeared on the multimetric Hot Hard Rock Songs list for one week in March 2022, peaking at No. 19.

Ego Trip debuted at No. 6 on the Top Hard Rock Albums survey in April 2022 and has earned 91,000 equivalent album units to date.

The band has tour dates in the United States and Europe lined up through October, with its next stop May 13 in Las Vegas.

All charts dated May 13 will update Tuesday, May 9, on Billboard.com.

THE ALBUM
An Inbuilt Fault, out Friday (May 5) on Partisan Records. 

THE ORIGIN

You wouldn’t recognize the Westerman of 2016. In the earliest days of his life as a professional artist, Will Westerman sported long, curly hair and played folk music that most often earned him comparisons to Nick Drake. By the time he began getting more notoriety, he had totally transformed. Now in his early thirties, he keeps his hair shorn close and wears sleeker clothes, mirroring the evolution of his music. 

In the late ‘10s, he began collaborating with the producer and fellow Londoner Bullion, who helped Westerman achieve a more electronic sheen. His early singles — including the breakthrough 2018 track “Confirmation,” which ignited a flurry of blog hype — had an alien quality, singer-songwriter fare put through a strange, otherworldly filter. 

Since “Confirmation,” the path has been as circuitous as Westerman’s exploratory songwriting. His debut album, Your Hero Is Not Dead, was finished and ready for release in 2019, but he alludes to various speed bumps caused by some people who “behaved badly.” Eventually it arrived right in the summer of 2020, with Westerman unable to tour or promote it properly due to the pandemic. Afterwards, he underwent a crisis of faith, wondering whether he wanted to release music anymore. “It took me about a year to get back in the headspace where I thought it was worth making music again,” he admits. “I remembered why all this stuff started in the first place.”

Explore

Explore

See latest videos, charts and news

See latest videos, charts and news

THE SOUND

Part of the power in Westerman’s recent music is the contrast between warped guitars and synth textures, and Westerman himself. He has always had a rich, expressive voice — it can be crystalline, but also not without a smoky huskiness. As a child, Westerman sang in choirs, and recently found solace in revisiting unaccompanied plainsong as a way of reconnecting with the human voice during long stretches of lockdown isolation. It gives him a unique melodic sensibility, where he may wind and surge beyond the lines we usually associate with pop song structures. 

Sophomore album An Inbuilt Fault was intended to be serpentine and unpredictable as well. “I wanted it to feel very close, and less sculpted,” Westerman says. “I wanted it to have a breathing quality.” At the time, he was demoing over polyrhythmic loops, experimenting and writing for himself without any expectation of necessarily finishing another album. In addition to the comfort of choral music, he was digging way into krautrock. “It was the sense of freedom, the sound of freeform expression,” he recalls. “It was the music I needed at that time.” 

While Westerman’s guitar is still pivotal to his music, An Inbuilt Fault takes the organic/artificial tension of his music to a new extreme, putting his voice to the forefront over a newly percussive backdrop. Abandoning the beats of past recordings, he wanted to embrace playing live in a room with human beings again — once he was finally able to. An Inbuilt Fault ended up being a document of a group of musicians wrestling an elusive sound into being, all tumbling drums and guitars surrounded by all manner of flickering, alluring textures at the songs’ edges. 

THE RECORD

With everything on hold, Westerman decided it was time to try a big life change he’d thought about for years — he wanted to move to Athens. Embarking on a “half-baked” plan to live in a van in the Balkans, he started across Europe and stopped to visit his father in rural Italy for a week. Thanks to more COVID lockdowns, he ended up being there for six months.

For all that time, Westerman had very little human interaction aside from seeing his father. He began writing songs again, mostly as a way of keeping himself sane, but eventually saw an album taking shape. When it was time to record, he reached out to Big Thief drummer/producer James Krivchenia — who he’d briefly hit it off with at a show immediately before the pandemic — and with Krivchenia’s touch and ear for percussion, An Inbuilt Fault has that more alive feeling Westerman was looking for. 

“I wanted to jump off the cliff creatively,” Westerman says. “I wanted to put myself in an environment that was completely alien to me as a way of trying to grow, to break out of the solipsistic way the music had been forming up until that point.” 

That isn’t to say the core ethos of Westerman’s writing was lost in the process. The music unspools and ambles, so it takes longer for these songs to sink into your head, but they don’t leave once they’re there. His melodies are as gorgeous as ever: one of the album’s most simultaneously jarring and transcendent moments is when he slides into the chorus of “Idol:RE-Run,” which happens to wring a hilarious amount of beauty out of the word “motherf–ker.” (“It wakes you up,” he quips.) Meanwhile, “A Lens Turning” uses a dexterous, knotty groove as underpinning for navigating a similarly tangled existential crisis. Closer “Pilot Was A Dancer” has an almost ‘90s alt-rock tone to it, a cathartic burst of guitars as Westerman tells an apocalyptic story about the last human being alive on Earth.

Though Westerman’s songs are inspired by an array of experiences, both his and others, he rarely is autobiographical. At the same time, he acknowledges much of An Inbuilt Fault is traversing relatively dark themes, its title a reflection on our inherent fallibility. At the end of it all, he’s made another striking album that also feels like a hard reset after the ellipsis of 2020. It feels like he’s starting again. 

THE FUTURE

Westerman did eventually make it to Athens, and his early days there were wild — things were just reopening, and parties thronged the streets at all hours of the night. One of the singles from An Inbuilt Fault, “CSI: Petralona,” is a rare moment that does derive more directly from Westerman’s actual life, inspired by a “near-death” experience and the kindness of strangers. But since then, it seems he’s settled into his new life in Greece. 

“It’s almost the opposite of London,” he muses. “It’s slow-paced. It’s lugubrious chaos. Nothing really works very well but there’s a strange internal logic to it where it does.” 

With some distance from London, and from the hubs of the music industry in western Europe and North America, Westerman has found he’s been more clear-headed creatively. He’s come out the other side of questioning his life as a musician revitalized and re-centered. “It remains the same irrespective of whether five people are listening or five thousand,” he says. “The scale is irrelevant in terms of process, and when I remember that it is very helpful. I know I’ll continue to do it now in some capacity, because I know I need to do it.” 

To that end, he mentions he’s already close to finishing the recording of another album. 

HIS FAVORITE PIECE OF GEAR

“I’ve been using this Meris Hedra pedal. It has three pitch shifters but it’s got secondary functions of delay and feedback. I think you can make a whole record with just a voice and this pedal. It would be an interesting thing to do that as a confined exercise. I don’t really understand it. It’s such a deep piece of equipment I don’t know half of it.” 

THE ARTIST THAT HE THINKS NEEDS MORE ATTENTION

“There’s loads. There’s an artist called Clara Mann. She’s almost folk revival, slightly maudlin, sadly beautiful minimalistic guitar singer-songwriter. I really enjoyed listening to that yesterday so I’ll go with that now. That’s a difficult question because there’s literally thousands.”

THE THING THAT HE THINKS NEEDS TO CHANGE IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

“I don’t think there is enough protection for artists — in general in the industry, but particularly for younger artists. There’s a disposability culture, where there isn’t really a huge amount of accountability for the way older people in the industry can exploit the good will or naivety of younger people when they’re offering something. It’s not like designing a washing machine. It’s a different sort of thing. 

“I think it would be good that, if [and] when people are exploited through their inexperience, there was some kind of culpability for the people who are doing that. Currently there is none. Seemingly there are very few bodies of people you can go to when things go wrong. Generally the people who carry the financial and emotional burden when those things happen are the people least equipped to do it, and that’s an imbalance that is not right.”

THE PIECE OF ADVICE HE BELIEVES EVERY NEW INDIE ARTIST NEEDS TO HEAR

Westerman pauses for a while, and then says simply: “Keep going.” 

He may have sung that he wanted to “rock and roll all night and party every day,” but Kiss singer-guitarist Paul Stanley‘s last few days have been pretty lacking in the “party” department.

After making factually inaccurate comments via Twitter about gender-affirming care for minors earlier this week, Stanley walked back his original statement on Thursday (May 4). “While my thoughts were clear, my words clearly were not,” he wrote.

In his original statement, Stanley forwarded misinformation about gender-affirming care for youths, saying that “irreversible” procedures shouldn’t be performed on children (despite the facts saying that the vast majority of this kind of care is reversible and often medically necessary for trans kids). “There is a BIG difference between teaching acceptance and normalizing and even encouraging participation in a lifestyle that confuses young children into questioning their sexual identification,” Stanley wrote.

But in his new statement, he focused on those currently undergoing the transition process, expressing his admiration for their bravery in being themselves. “Most importantly and above all else, I support those struggling with their sexual identity while enduring constant hostility and those whose path leads them to reassignment surgery,” he said. “It’s hard to fathom the kind of conviction that one must feel to take those steps.”

Closing his new statement, Stanley opted not to clarify his original statement, insisting that social media may not be the best place for genuine discourse. “A paragraph or two will remain far too short to fully convey my thoughts or point of view, so I will leave that for another time and place,” he wrote.

See Stanley’s latest statement below: