Rock
Page: 155
This story is part of Billboard‘s K-pop Issue.
As one of the few non-English-speaking students at an American international academy in Singapore, the artist born Lee Seung-joo rarely talked to his peers, and he would often skip lunch to avoid eating alone in the cafeteria. Even his stage name is an anagram for “loner,” and his Instagram handle is “lorenisalone” — but as he laughs over Zoom through coughs of smoke while puffing on an orange vape in his Seoul studio at 1 a.m. local time, he says that listeners shouldn’t take those gestures seriously. “Some people DM me like, ‘You’re not alone.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s just my Instagram ID.’ ”
Still, LØREN says being dragged to the academy “kicking and screaming” by his parents — and having to learn English — planted the seed for becoming a global star. “I think being miserable at school is not a necessity,” he explains, “but I feel like if I had been very happy, I wouldn’t have been so eager to make something of myself.”
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Instead of playing basketball and beer pong with his more popular peers, LØREN spent his time learning to play instruments in the band room and listening to Green Day and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Too shy to form a band of his own, after graduation in 2013, he forged a more insular musical path: making beats as an EDM producer. He soon connected with other musicians by DJ’ing on the Seoul nightclub circuit and found mentors within The Black Label, an associate company of YG Entertainment, founded by producer Teddy Park. With his help, LØREN leveraged a career as an in-demand producer-songwriter, scoring major credits with K-pop sensation BLACKPINK on tracks like “Lovesick Girls” and “Pretty Savage.”
Saint Laurent sweater, pants and shoes.
Ssam Kim
But his attention kept drifting back to rock music. “It kind of got tiring for me,” he says of his start in EDM. “Not that I don’t like [that music], but I grew up so heavily on rock, there was dissonance between what I created and what I really liked. I had an epiphany: Being a frontman of a band doing rock music has been my dream all my life.”
In 2021, he launched his solo career with a pair of singles: the bilingual, early-2000s-inspired rock tracks “NEED (ooo-eee)” and “Empty Trash,” followed by the more pop-facing “All My Friends Are Turning Blue.” LØREN self-released the three songs on his independent label, Fire Exit Records, in partnership with The Black Label.
Now, at 28 years old, the artist is committing to his vision. He signed a record deal with 88Rising earlier this year (still in partnership with The Black Label), saying he knew he needed to be on its roster, which is full of Asian artists with global reach like Joji, NIKI, Rich Brian and more. “I like how their artists, you can just tell they’re doing their own thing without being pressured to create something they don’t f–k with,” he says.
But none occupy the punk-rock lane like LØREN. As he points out, the genre isn’t as popular in South Korea as it is in the United States — and, in a previous interview, went as far as to call rock “dead” in his home country. He now admits that might have been a slight overstatement, though he’s eager to lean on 88Rising’s expertise in finding a larger audience to connect with.
After discovering LØREN’s string of singles, 88Rising executive vp John Yang knew the multi-instrumentalist would fill a sonic gap on the label’s lineup. He says he wasn’t even aware of LØREN’s work with BLACKPINK until after the deal was done. “When we sign artists, we always vibe out with them. What really matters is the person, their personality,” says Yang. “We’re not in this business just to become big or make money out of it. We’re here because we love music, and we want other people to enjoy music, too. LØREN’s character, his storytelling and his passion really got us into him.”
Saint Laurent top, pants and shoes.
Ssam Kim
LØREN’s first 88Rising release, the raucous five-track EP Put Up a Fight, was finished by the time he signed his contract. After polishing touches and strategy talks, the project arrived March 24 — and he’s already looking ahead. He has “five or six” tracks completed for his upcoming full-length and is in the throes of practicing something entirely new: playing with other people, for other people.
One of 88Rising’s first orders of business for LØREN was to book a series of U.S. shows, including sets at Coachella and Head in the Clouds, a two-day label-curated festival in New York. He has been hard at work translating his songs for the stage with a band of close friends, which he reveals can be difficult at times, given he records every guitar and drum line on his songs without writing anything down. “Sometimes [my guitarist] asks me, ‘How did you come up with this sound? What pedal did you use?’ I’m just like, ‘I don’t know, dude,’ ” he says with a grin.
But even as everything around him — from his team to his band to his fan base — grows, the inward focus that shaped LØREN early on keeps him grounded. He holds out his hands, nails chipped with black polish, seemingly visualizing the vastness of his future: “I’m a musician at the end of the day,” he continues. “I just want to put out as much music as I can in my lifetime, literally until I die.”
Ssam Kim
This story originally appeared in the April 22, 2023 issue of Billboard.
The 1975 singer Matty Healy has issued an apology for controversial comments he made about rapper Ice Spice on The Adam Friedland Show in February.
“I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you,” Healy said during a recent 1975 show in Auckland, New Zealand as a kind of blanket apology for his series of odd or offensive actions in the spotlight, according to a fan video of the mea culpa. “Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a d–k. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry. I don’t want it to be misconstrued as mean. I don’t mind being a bit of a joker… but I am genuinely sorry if I’ve upset them because I f–king love them,” he added while cradling a half-drunk bottle of wine.
In the Friedland bit earlier this year, the show’s hosts played a clip of the “Munch” rapper talking about her love of alternative music, including Coldplay and The 1975 from an Elle interview in January.
The hosts and Healy then begin speculating on Spice’s ethnicity, with jokes about her sounding like an “Inuit Spice Girl,” a “chubby Chinese lady” and one of them saying, “‘Yeah, I rap and make music’ Do they talk like that? Do Inuits talk like that?” The audio of the podcast then found Healy and the hosts imitating Chinese and Hawaiian accents as they laughed out loud and joked about what Healy should have said when he slipped into Ice Spice’s DMs.
After one of the men suggested Healy should have asked about her ethnic background while dropping an Inuit ethnic slur, Healy called Ice Spice “dumb.” The offensive episode was pulled from Apple and Spotify earlier this month but can still be heard on Youtube.
The rambling chat also included Healy and the hosts chuckling about “gay song parodies” of hits by Daniel Bedingfield and Dobie Gray in which NSFW lyrics were swapped in for the original. Healy also opined that “I don’t think the gays really like it” in reference to what the hosts termed the “pass” Harry Styles’ has gotten from the queer community. “It’s young girls that think it’s a new thing that are like, ‘Oh my God,’” Healy said of Styles’ inclusive, gender-fluid sensibility. “Maybe it’s not all gay guys but it’s a lot of them,” he added.
At the time, Yungblud took the trio to task for their offensive comments, tweeting, “Love listening to three privileged white dudes sit around and objectify a young black female artist who’s blowing up… Welcome to your 30’s I guess…” Healy responded at the time with an Instagram Story video mocking Yungblud’s activism and support for “underrated youth.”
Earlier this month Healy said he was quitting social media again saying “the era of me being a f–king arsehole is coming to an end. I’ve had enough.”
The enduring trick of Kelly Clarkson‘s daily Kellyoke segment on her eponymous daytime talk show is that the singer always finds a way to make her carefully curated covers feel brand new in her hands.
Take Clarkson’s s simmering version of Coldplay‘s “Magic,” which she performed on Friday’s (April 21) Kelly Clarkson Show. The already pretty mellow original — which appeared on the band’s 2014 Ghost Stories album — bops along at a medium pace, fueled by singer Chris Martin’s keening “ooh-ooh-ooh” vocalizations, a spare, muffled snare beat and spacey guitars.
Clarkson’s version borrowed the same hypnotic bass strum and spare beat, but amped up the heartache with her signature yearning vocals and flawless runs. “And if you were to ask me/ After all we’ve been through/ ‘Still believe in magic?’ Oh yes, I do,” she sang in her higher register, repeating the last line for devastating emotional emphasis.
The three-time Grammy winner confirmed last week that her anticipated post-divorce record, the 14-track Chemistry, is due out on June 23 and will be split into two sides, “Mine” and “Me.” She also revealed that there are two very unique guests joining her on the collection, actor/comedian/banjo player Steve Martin (on “i hate love”) and legendary percussionist/singer Sheila E. (on “that’s right.”)
“Having chemistry with someone is an incredible, and overwhelming, feeling,” Clarkson said about the record in a statement. “It’s like you have no choice in the matter. You are just drawn to each other. This can be good and bad. This album takes you down every path that chemistry could lead you down. There are many stages of grief and loss on this album. Each song is a different stage and emotional state.”
Watch Clarkson’s Kellyoke cover of “Magic” below.
Can’t stop listening to Alanis Morissette‘s performance of “You Oughta Know” at the CMT Music Awards? Spotify has teamed up with the Canadian singer — as well as Lainey Wilson, Ingrid Andress, Morgan Wade and Madeline Edwards, who all performed the hit with Morissette at the awards show — for a new studio recording of the track.
Like the original treatment for the song, Wilson delivers the first few lines of the ’90s classic, followed by Wade, Edwards and Andress before Morissette pops in with the first verse’s cheeky questions “Is she perverted like me?/ Would she go down on you in a theater?” she sings.
The women all reconvened for the Jagged Little Pill single’s well-known chorus, supporting each other in perfect harmony: “And I’m here, to remind you/ Of the mess you left when you went away/ It’s not fair, to deny me/ Of the cross I bear that you gave to me/ You, you, you oughta know.”
The all-star team-up took the stage at the 2023 CMT Music Awards on April 2, and celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the “CMT Next Women of Country” franchise, which seeks to elevate and support female talents within country music. Wilson, Andress, Edwards and Wade have all been a part of the program.
“Performing on the CMT Awards with this exceptionally talented group of artists to celebrate the 10th anniversary of CMT’s Next Women of Country program was truly a career highlight,” Andress said in a statement. “I’ve always looked up to Alanis for the way she’s masterfully navigated a male-dominated industry by always speaking her mind and never sacrificing her own sound or vision. We all had so much fun performing this song together and are so excited to share it with the world all over again as a Spotify Single.”
Wade added, “Alanis is an iconic songwriter and bad–s inspiration to women everywhere. It’s such a special experience that I got to sing with her during this performance with Madeline, Ingrid and Lainey. I am thrilled this moment is now going to live a new life as a Spotify Single.”
Listen to the studio version of the Morissette’s performance of “You Oughta Know” at the CMT Music Awards below.
In timing that was surely coincidental, iconic OG jam band the Grateful Dead unrolled their first post on TikTok on Thursday (April 20). The ultimate toker’s band celebrated the universally beloved smoker holiday with a compilation video of archival footage set to a live, remastered take of “St. Stephen” recorded at the legendary Fillmore West in San Francisco in 1969.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The @gratefuldead account was launched in conjunction withe Rhino Entertainment and a release promises that it will “serve as an outlet to celebrate the decades of music, generations of community, and endless array of creativity that has woven the band and its fans into every new era of the world’s counterculture and consciousness.”
The first 30-second clip pulls together archival concert footage, candid scenes from “Shakedown Street,” handmade fan artwork and snippets of Deadheads spinning and showing off their customized vans. A release promises “much more exclusive content” in the offing on a near-daily basis in the future a month after the debut of the band’s music on TikTok in March, which allowed users to used the group’s recordings in their videos for the first time.
The Dead are just the latest heritage act to make their way to the TikTok universe, following on the heels of fellow old schoolers Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, who’ve all joined since 2021. The GD spin-off band, Dead & Company, will play their final shows this summer, with the last gigs slated to take place at San Francisco’s Oracle Park on July 14-16.
Check out the first GD TikTok video here.
Someone call a doctor, because the price a bidder paid for Eddie Van Halen‘s iconic red, white and black-striped guitar from the “Hot For Teacher” video was sold for a song this week. According to auction house Sotheby’s, an unnamed bidder bought the instrument for $3,932,000 when the lot closed on Tuesday after bidding was initially estimated to land between $2-$3 million.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“The legendary ‘Hot for Teacher’ stage used and filmed guitar, custom made by Paul Unkert of Kramer Guitars for Eddie Van Halen, including important innovations customized for Eddie’s evolving guitar technique,” the listing read in describing the instrument Sotheby’s dubbed “one of the most iconic guitars of the MTV era.”
For you six-string obsessives out there, the auction house dove deeper into the details of the instrument the late guitarist wielded in the salacious 1984 Van Halen video featuring the band members and their school-age doppelgängers lusting after their scantily clad instructors.
“Poplar double-cut ‘Strat’ style body, the top routed for a single double-coil Seymour Duncan humbucker pickup, volume control, Floyd Rose bridge with whammy bar, unvarnished 22 fret maple bolt-on neck (stamped ‘UNK’ on heel) with Kramer sticker on headstock, unvarnished body and headstock spray painted with Van Halen’s characteristic black and white abstract stripe design on a red ground,” it reads of the guitar EVH slashes at as he rips off one of his patented fleet-fingered solos while strolling across a row of desks.
But wait, there’s more. “Rear routed for the Floyd Rose’s three springs and stop, no pick guard or rear cover (as designed), screw holes on the back for Eddie Van Halen’s patented flip-up rest (for playing the guitar horizontally. Original case with tour and Warner Brothers tags.” The guitar, made of poplar wood, is believed to have been completed in 1982 and delivered to Van Halen in Jan. 1983, becoming his main instrument during 1983-1984.
As a bonus, the winning bidder also took home the white straitjacket and white gloves worn by Van Halen in the video. Van Halen died at 65 in Oct. 2020 after a long battle with cancer.
Watch the “Hot For Teacher” video below.
From its grim, cinematic observations about the apocalypse on opening track “Five Years” to the haunting reassurance that we’re not alone on concluding song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a masterpiece that’s often hailed as one of the greatest albums of all time.
The glam rock classic, loosely based around the narrative of a red-headed, androgynous, extraterrestrial rock star, quickly elevated Bowie to superstar status in 1972. Fifty-one years later, Ziggy Stardust has received a spectacular reggae recasting: Ziggy Stardub, a new album by the Easy Star All-Stars, due April 21 on Easy Star Records. It’s the latest in the New York City-based independent’s series of reggae tributes to landmark rock and pop albums. Other titles include 2012’s Thrillah (based on Michael Jackson’s blockbuster Thriller) and the series’ best-selling release, 2003’s Dub Side of the Moon (inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon).
“Ziggy Stardub is like taking David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars band [bassist Trevor Bolden, guitarist Mick Ronson and the sole surviving member, drummer Michael “Woody” Woodmansey] on an airplane traveling back to Jamaica in the late 1970s; what would happen if we did that? People aren’t used to hearing music they are familiar with in a totally different light, but hopefully, they’ll come along for that ride with us,” explains Michael Goldwasser, the producer and arranger of Ziggy Stardub (and the other Easy Star tribute albums. Goldwasser is also a co-founder of Easy Star Records with Lem Oppenheimer, Eric Smith and Remy Gerstein, and is bandleader, producer and multi-instrumentalist for the Easy Star All-Stars). “All of our tributes start with great source material because it always comes down to the songs, and the great artists we work with.”
Each of the featured vocalists on Ziggy Stardub brings their distinctive styling to Bowie’s powerful, otherworldly lyrical imagery. British lover’s rock crooner Maxi Priest delivers a smooth, soul-inflected rendition of the “hazy cosmic jive” that is “Starman,” Ziggy Stardub’s first single; veteran Brooklyn/Jamaican singer Carlton Livingston’s joyous take on “Star” incorporates a rollicking ska tempo mixed with 1950s rock n’ roll; “Hang On To Yourself,” featuring Fishbone, Johnny Go Figure and Living Color’s Vernon Reid, fuses early digital dancehall sonics into soaring rock riffs; Macy Gray offers a gritty interpretation of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”; and British reggae band The Skints bring the requisite crunching guitars to “Ziggy Stardust.” Representing a younger generation of Jamaican singers, Mortimer’s exquisite vocals capture the essence of “Soul Love” and Naomi Cowan integrates a “rock and rollin’ bitch” persona into her gorgeously trippy reading of “Moonage Daydream,” complemented by Alex Lifeson’s blistering guitar lead.
As a teenager in England in the 1970s, David Hinds — lead singer/songwriter and founding member of Grammy-winning British reggae band Steel Pulse — describes David Bowie’s influence as inescapable. Even so, he never heard “Five Years” prior to Easy Star presenting it to him. To gain a greater understanding of Bowie’s artistry while recording the song, Hinds abandoned his usual approach to executing melody and syncopation. “Steel Pulse is all about rhyme, bounce, singing on a particular rhythm; with the Bowie song, it was about expressing word by word, phonic by phonic, syllable by syllable, without that being too overdone,” Hinds tells Billboard. “In making that effort, I experienced what Bowie was about, and I just hope justice was done to the song.” The restrained anger in Hinds’ vocals conveys Bowie’s striking, poetic vision of Armageddon, punctuated by the evocative lyric, “Five years, that’s all we got.”
Ostensibly, there’s little sonic overlap between reggae’s roots rock and British glam rock, yet Goldwasser’s nuanced, layered arrangements and crisp production create an expansive common ground, seamlessly meshing the originals’ celestial impressions with signature Jamaican sounds, including thunderous basslines, bubbling keyboards and flying cymbal drum patterns. “When working within the framework of a song with an established melody and harmonic structure, I consider what to include or interpolate; that’s why the tribute albums take longer than the original albums I have produced,” says Goldwasser. “I put in many interesting details to give the listener something different to focus on each time. I treat these tribute albums with reverence and humor: music should be fun, but I have reverence for the original material, and anyone listening will recognize both of those facets.”
Goldwasser’s admiration for the original songs and his meticulousness in transforming them into finely sculpted reggae tracks for Easy Star tribute albums has turned many rock fans into reggae enthusiasts. “Before the release of Dub Side of the Moon, we got hate from people on Pink Floyd and classic rock message boards who said things like ‘Dark Side of the Moon is sacred, how dare they?’ After the album came out, on those same message boards, people said ‘Easy Star did a great job.’ People have told me that listening to our tribute albums got them into reggae. That’s part of Easy Star’s mission: to break down barriers. If you can open your mind and your heart to different music, you can open your mind and your heart to different people.”
The Revivalists reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart for a third time with “Kid,” which jumps to the top of the April 22-dated survey.
The song is the band’s first leader since “All My Friends,” which ruled for three weeks in 2018.
Previously, the band led with “Wish I Knew You” for two weeks in 2016.
In between “Friends” and “Kid,” The Revivalists appeared on the chart twice, paced by the No. 2-peaking “Change,” the other of its four top 10s, in 2019.
Concurrently, “Kid” bullets at its No. 3 high on Alternative Airplay. There, it’s the band’s top-charting song since “Wish” ruled for a week in 2017; in between those hits, the group notched its other of three top 10s, “Friends,” which rose to No. 7.
On the all-rock-format, audience-based Rock & Alternative Airplay chart, “Kid” rises 5-4 with 4.1 million audience impressions, a 10% boost, according to Luminate. The band’s best is “Wish” which peaked at No. 2.
The Revivalists’ new Adult Alternative Airplay No. 1 follows the solo sojourn of lead singer David Shaw, who released an eponymous album in May 2021. “Shaken,” a song from the set, hit No. 21 on the chart that January. He told Billboard ahead of the project’s release, “From the beginning, this album was all about self-exploration and the joys that come from finding strength and confidence in places that might not have been accessible before.”
“Kid” is the lead single from Pour It Out Into the Night, The Revivalists’ upcoming fifth studio album and first since 2018’s Take Good Care. The new LP is due June 2.
Are you ready for some… emo?! The NFL announced on Wednesday (April 19) that Fall Out Boy will join metal legends Mötley Crüe and bass thumper Thundercat at next week’s NFL Draft Concert Series. The series of shows will take place next week at the 2023 NFL Draft in Kansas City from April 27-29.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
FOB will be first on the field, hitting the stage after the conclusion of the opening round of the draft on April 27, followed by the Crüe, who will headline after round 3 on April 28. Day three will feature bassist/singer Thundercat, during which the NFL said he will curate a special performance that will “pay tribute to the rich music history and the legacy of jazz in Kansas City.”
All the performances will take place at the Draft Theater in front of the city’s iconic Union Station. General admission fan viewing will be on a standing-room-only, first-come, first-served basis on the North Lawn of the National WWI Museum and Memorial; the lawn will stay open during the draft and for general fan viewing of the Draft Concert Series, which is free with registration.
The performances will be streamed in full here and live on the NFL Facebook and YouTube pages each night. Parts of the performances will also be televised on the NFL Network and ESPN.
Grammy-nominated singer and KC native Oleta Adams will perform the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and country singer Brittney Spencer will sing the National Anthem live from downtown during the opening festivities. KC-based party band Lost Wax will be the house and at the Draft Theater and perform between draft selections each day.
When Richard Wayne Penniman died on May 9, 2020 of bone cancer, he had long retired from the public eye. COVID was gripping the nation and the world was in various stages of lockdown. At the age of 87, the pandemic gave the man better known as Little Richard a chance to once again grab the spotlight.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
With everyone at home and online, the news of his death introduced younger generations to the grandfather of rock and roll. His death also sparked interest in his life by producer, director and former label executive Lisa Cortés. She looked for films or documentaries on him and found… nothing. Shocked that such an iconic figure didn’t have one, she decided to make one.
The Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award-winning producer and director of documentaries such as All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020) and The Remix: Hip Hop Fashion (2019) is not new to filmmaking. Still, she questioned how to approach telling the story of a person who was larger than life.
“My process was to start with the source, which was Richard,” Cortés says, calling Billboard from a hotel room in Chicago. “I read his biography [The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock by Charles White] which was a lot of fun and very colorful. One of the things that became very apparent as I was doing research was this idea that Richard put forth of not feeling that he received his due, his recognition for his contributions. I knew then that I wanted Richard to narrate his story. I wanted to give the microphone to Mr. Penniman. Specifically, to give him agency that he felt had been denied to him at times.”
Cortés’ film, Little Richard: I Am Everything, was acquired by Magnolia Pictures after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and begins streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV and several other platforms Friday (April 21). Its story is told through archival footage of Little Richard performances and interviews, as well as by those who knew and worked with him. The film follows him from his childhood in Macon, Georgia, through the many ups and downs of a long and storied career. It adeptly reveals the layers that influenced the person who became the performer no one could ignore. It is also the story of rock and roll’s birth, queer culture, and being a Black gay man in America.
“In making documentaries there’s always twist and turns, things that you find out — like being introduced to [pioneering transgender rights activist and performer] Sir Lady Java,” Cortés says. “In telling this story I did go into it with a desire to center his amazing contribution. Through research and our interviews and archival footage we show people that when he arrived on the scene in 1955, there was really no one like him. He might have been influenced by artists like Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Brother Joe May, or [Little Richard co-writer and piano player] Esquerita, but he brings innovation on multiple levels through his musicality, lyrics, through the way he dresses and presents himself, through the way he messes with gender fluidity.”
When she began her two-year journey of making the documentary, Cortés had the music and the visual of the man Little Richard presented. “But I didn’t know all of the things that made up Richard, and all of the people who he was generous with and helped,” she explains. These people included a young Jimi Hendrix, who played guitar in Richard’s band, as well as Richard introducing Billy Preston to the Beatles when they were in search of a keyboardist for their debut album, and in 1955, sending an unknown singer named James Brown to perform as Little Richard when he couldn’t. The latter stunt worked because people didn’t know yet what Little Richard looked like.
Cortés interviewed over two dozen people, including Mick Jagger, Billy Porter, John Waters and Tom Jones, as well as a number of scholars. “They’re there, as you can see in the film — oftentimes to be in conversation with him to question what he presents as fact — but we as an audience might have a different perspective on,” she says.
In allowing Little Richard to tell his story in the film, there was a theme that permeated throughout: Appropriation and obliteration.
“Why is it that we know Elvis and Pat Boone’s covers of ‘Tutti Frutti,’ and see Elvis as the King of Rock and Roll, and we don’t put Richard on that same platform?” Cortés wonders. “I’m interested in this idea of, ‘Why do we elevate an Elvis as a culture and not elevate a Little Richard?’ By not elevating a Little Richard, by the erasure of the tremendous scope of his innovation and cultural impact … it’s a discredit [to him].
“This film is like my testimony of, ‘This is why Little Richard is the bomb’ — because you might not know, but way back when, he started so many things that affect music and culture now,” she continues. “You do not have a Prince if you don’t have a Little Richard, and I would dare say you don’t have a Lil’ Nas X. These artists are incredible in their own right, but they are part of the progeny, the imagining of, ‘I’m going to be the prettiest person out there in my presentation.’ This intersectional… this interSEXional… conversation that he brings is still happening now. He is not in the past tense, and even though his physical being is no longer with us, he is still with us creatively and socially.”
Little Richard: I Am Everything – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack will be released on Varèse Sarabande Records digitally on June 16, with CD & LP releases to follow.